{"product_id":"9781506400365","title":"The Cross before Constantine: The Early Life of a Christian Symbol","description":"This book brings together, for the first time, the relevant material evidence demonstrating Christian use of the cross prior to Constantine. Bruce W. Longenecker upends a longstanding consensus that the cross was not a Christian symbol until Constantine appropriated it to consolidate his power in the fourth century. Longenecker presents a wide variety of artifacts from across the Mediterranean basin that testify to the use of the cross as a visual symbol by some pre-Constantinian Christians. Those artifacts interlock with literary witnesses from the same period to provide a consistent and robust portrait of the cross as a pre-Constantinian symbol of Christian devotion. The material record of the pre-Constantinian period illustrates that Constantine did not invent the cross as a symbol of Christian faith; for an impressive number of Christians before Constantine’s reign, the cross served as a visual symbol of commitment to a living deity in a dangerous world.","brand":"Augsburg Fortress, Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47164748497136,"sku":"9781506400365","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781506400365_p0.jpg?v=1763719712","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781506400365","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}